tract with Wadsworth and Halley. We've got a bunch of cattle
with them on shares. I guess we'd like to do business with you right
enough, Mr. Roosevelt, but there's nothing we can do until Wadsworth
and Halley releases us."

"I'll buy those cattle."

"All right," remarked Sylvane. "Then the best thing for us to do is to
go to Minnesota an' see those men an' get released from our contract.
When that's fixed up, we can make any arrangements you've a mind to."

"That will suit me."

Roosevelt drew a checkbook from his pocket, and there, sitting on the
log (oh, vision of Uncle James!) wrote a check, not for the
contemplated five thousand dollars, but for fourteen, and handed it to
Sylvane. Merrifield and Sylvane, he directed, were to purchase a few
hundred head of cattle that fall in addition to the hundred and fifty
head which they held on shares for Wadsworth.

"Don't you want a receipt?" asked Merrifield at last.

"Oh, that's all right," said Roosevelt. "If I didn't trust you men, I
wouldn't go into business with you."

They shook hands all around; whereupon they dropped the subject from
conversation and talked about game.

"We were sitting on a log," said Merrifield, many years later, "up at
what we called Cannonball Creek. He handed us a check for fourteen
thousand dollars, handed it right over to us on a verbal contract. He
didn't have a scratch of a pen for it."

"All the security he had for his money," added Sylvane, "was our
honesty."

The man from the East, with more than ordinary ability to read the
faces of men, evidently thought that that was quite enough.

The next dawn Roosevelt did not go hunting as usual. All morning he
sat over the table in the cabin with Lang and the two Canadians
laboring over the contract which three of them were to sign in case
his prospective partners were released from the obligation which for
the time bound them. It was determined that Ferris and Merrifield
should go at once to Minnesota to confer with Wadsworth and Halley.
Roosevelt, meanwhile, would continue his buffalo hunt, remaining in
the Bad Lands until he received word that the boys from the Maltese
Cross were in a position to "complete the deal." The wheels of the new
venture having thus, in defiance of Uncle James, been set in motion,
Roosevelt parted from his new friends, and resumed the interrupted
chase.

The red gods must have looked with favor on Roosevelt's adventurous
spirit, for luck turned suddenly